1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an air conditioner having a filter, and a rotary door for opening and closing an air opening through which air flows. The present invention is suitably used for an inside/outside air switching unit of a vehicle air conditioner.
2. Description of Related Art
In a conventional inside/outside air switching unit using a rotary door described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,643,079, a filter is bent to protrude toward an inside air introduction port and an outside air introduction port, so that a filter area can be increased without increasing an air passage sectional area. Because the filter is for removing dust contained in air, it is necessary to change or clean the filter periodically. However, because the filter is bent, the bent portion of the filter is interfered with an inner wall of a casing when the filter is detached, and detaching performance is deteriorated.
To overcome this problem, the filter may be disposed to be separated from the inner wall of the casing by a sufficient space. However, in this case, the size of the inside/outside air switching unit becomes larger.
In view of the foregoing problems, it is an object of the present invention to provide an air conditioner in which an attaching/detaching performance of the filter is improved while a size of the air conditioner can be reduced.
According to the present invention, an air conditioner includes a casing having an air opening through which air flows, a rotary door for opening and closing the air opening, and a filter for cleaning air. The rotary door has both rotation shafts at both sides in an axial direction of the rotary door, and a door surface disposed at a position away from the rotation shafts by a predetermined dimension in a radial direction of the rotary door to be crossed with the radial direction. In addition, the filter is detachably disposed inside the door surface, and has a bent portion protruding toward the door surface. In the air conditioner, the casing has a filter-removable port through which the filter is detachably attached into the casing, and the filter has a filter deformation member which is disposed to deform the bent portion of the filter to a flat shape. Because the filter can be deformed to the flat shape, the filter can be readily removed from the filter-removable port of the casing. Accordingly, a filter area can be increased by bending the filter, and the size of the air conditioner can be reduced while attaching/detaching performance of the filter is improved. Preferably, the filter deformation member is a string-shaped member which is disposed to crush the bent portion when a predetermined tension is applied thereto. Accordingly, while the filter is attached into or detached from the casing, the filter can be deformed to the flat shape with a simple structure. On the other hand, after the filter is attached into the casing through the filter-removable port, the tension applied to the string-shaped member is loosened, so that an original shape of the filter can be substantially returned.
More preferably, the bent portion is constructed by a corrugated filter element formed into a wave shape, and the string-shaped member is disposed to cross ridges of the corrugated filter element on the bent portion. Therefore, the bent portion can be readily deformed by a small tension of the string-shaped member.
The filter further has a flat pedestal portion for fixing the bent portion, a part of the pedestal portion is bent to form a cover member for opening and closing the filter-removable port, one end of the string-shaped member is disposed to be fixed to the pedestal portion at a side opposite to the cover member, and the other end of the string-shaped member is disposed to be fixed to the cover member. Accordingly, when the cover member opens the filter-removable port of the casing, the string-shaped member crushes the bent portion. On the other hand, when the cover member closes the filter-removable port of the casing, the bent portion substantially returns to an original shape before being crushed. Accordingly, the deformation operation of the bent portion of the filter can be made simple, and the attaching/detaching performance of the filter can be further improved.